- Hi, I'm Choi and welcome to my kitchen.
Damini, my daughter and I,
we're going to be making Halwa today for breakfast.
It's an Indian dessert .
It is actually very good for you.
A dessert that people make all the way from India,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, the Middle East.
We have many, many varieties of Halwa.
I'm going to teach my daughter, Damini, how to make it.
We're going to make one version for you
but please feel free to improvise, to add new ingredients.
We buy all our ingredients zero waste
in these nylon bags from Sprouts
and we come home and put them into these containers.
- I bought these for my apartment at college
so my roommates and I all use these.
- Damini, take two cups of the semolina flour
and put it in that heavy-bottomed pan,
because otherwise it will stick if it's a thin bottom pan.
So, let this roast
and you can start making the jaggery liquid.
We're gonna take four cubes of the jaggery
and add it to about five cups of water
and boil it until the jaggery dissolves in the hot water.
We're going to put cardamom.
So, grind it, Damini.
Just break them apart.
Little harder, use some muscle, Damini.
This is my grandmother's mortar and pestle
so it means a lot to me to see you (chuckles)
crushing cardamom in it.
Add the cardamom.
- [Damini] How brown does it have to be?
- That's a good question.
You see the browning that's happening?
You want the whole, all of that semolina to be that color.
The next step, we want to crush the saffron.
- [Damini] Is that too much?
- No, it's never too much saffron in the world.
And then when you're done, Damini,
add it to that milk, let it soak.
Do about half a cup of walnuts because-
- Can I just estimate?
- Yeah, just estimate, Damini.
Get away from the tyranny of measurements, yeah.
That's great.
And you can add pistachios, cranberries.
Best part of cooking is making the recipe your own.
The anti-recipe, that's what we want.
When I was little, I would beg my mother
for walnuts and raisins
and they used to come from Afghanistan.
The Afghan traders would come in the winter
and sell these delicious nuts and fruits.
They don't come any more.
Too many national borders.
- Even the raisins in India taste better than the ones here.
They're sour.
- They're less sweet.
We'll add cranberries.
In India they, of course, use raisins
but we have to acknowledge the new world.
Can you smell it-
- Yeah, I'm starting to smell it.
- Yeah, you know, in India
we believe that smell is half of eating.
You have to learn when this is ready
by what it smells like, right?
You know, Indian cooking, you spend a lot of time
dry roasting ingredients
and we believe that this really brings out the flavors.
Damini, you were right,
I was too stingy with the pistachios.
- [Damini] Yeah. (both laugh)
- Add a few more. - Okay.
It was my sister's and my favorite dessert
so whenever my mom would make it
we were always really excited.
- And it was my favorite dessert when I was a child
so it's nice now to see for three generations,
we've be making Halwa.
We're going to dry roast the seeds.
Let's take that pan.
That's what a pan will look like
if you use it for dry roasting.
Add two tablespoons of flax seeds.
Two of each seeds.
We're going to dry roast the seeds.
Put it on low heat
and you have to watch it because sesame burns really fast.
You can't really make Halwa without a lot of ghee.
So, I would add at least four tablespoons.
Fat has been so demonized
and people have been eating ghee in India
for thousands of years.
It's a powerful anti-inflammatory
and so do eat more ghee.
We're going to fry it up till you can smell the ghee.
You can now pour that jaggery water
into the flour. (halwa batter sizzles)
Perfect, now just cover it and let it simmer.
So, jaggery is unrefined sugar cane juice.
Refined sugar is mostly sucrose
but jaggery has a lot of iron and has a lot of minerals
so it's actually very good for you.
- And it tastes a lot better, I think.
- And then just let it be, Damini, for about 10 minutes.
Let's see what we did.
- It looks darker than if we did it with sugar.
- Yeah, and I like that.
And I just want to say that our family,
my husband is Pakistani and I'm Indian
and Halwa goes across the borders.
We all eat Halwa, we all love Halwa.
You've had it in Karachi, you had it in Kolkata.
And then we garnish it with saffron and the seeds.
So, Damini, I'll tell you why
this is so good for you.
You have the whole grain flour, which is high fiber.
The ghee is powerful anti-inflammatory.
The nuts and the seeds are protein
and all the essential oils that we need
and some amino acids.
And then the jaggery gives you iron.
What do you think?
Was it a little more sweet?
- I think it's perfect.
The best you've made, I think.
- Really? Thank you, Damini.
For people would haven't tasted it, Damini,
I would describe it as,
it has a rich texture because the flour has been roasted.
The nuts and the cranberries add a lot of crunch.
It has enough ghee to make your taste buds explode.
- And now that I know how to make it,
I'm excited when I go back to school next week,
I can go and make it for my friends
and I'm sure they'll all love it.
- Cheers, Damini. (Damini laughs)
Welcome to Living Backyard to Table.
Our Sayeed-Chatterjee home
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and we believe that the home
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(gentle swing music)